There’s some recent research by Kevin Dorst and Matthew Mandelkern into the idea that people fall for the conjunction fallacy because they are so often trying to strike a balance between being correct and being informative.
Roughly, the idea is that guessing “Linda is an activist and a bank teller” is so informative, it’s sometimes more preferable as a guess than just guessing that Linda is a bank teller. Giving not just true but informative guesses is such an ingrained habit that it’s hard to stop and select the option most likely to be true.
There’s some recent research by Kevin Dorst and Matthew Mandelkern into the idea that people fall for the conjunction fallacy because they are so often trying to strike a balance between being correct and being informative.
Roughly, the idea is that guessing “Linda is an activist and a bank teller” is so informative, it’s sometimes more preferable as a guess than just guessing that Linda is a bank teller. Giving not just true but informative guesses is such an ingrained habit that it’s hard to stop and select the option most likely to be true.
You can download their paper here: https://philpapers.org/rec/DORGG or read a blog post by Kevin Dorst here: https://www.kevindorst.com/stranger_apologies/the-conjunction-fallacy-take-a-guess